Listen to Robert Emmerich introduce The Big Apple, a hit song from 1937. Music written by Bob and performed by Tommy Dorsey's Clambake Seven with Bob on piano. Lyrics written by Buddy Bernier and sung by Edythe Wright. Audio provided by Dorothy Emmerich.

The term “mediacracy” (media + -cracy), meaning the rule of media, was coined in the book title Mediacracy: American Parties and Politics in the Communications Age (1975) by Kevin Phillips. “Mediacracy” is often used disparagingly, similar to the word “mediocrity.”

“Mediaocracy” (media + -ocracy) means something similar to “mediacracy,” but appears to be formed from the words “media” and “democracy.” “Mediaocracy and Mistrust: Extending ‘New York Times’ Defamation Protection to Nonmedia Defendants” was the title of a 1982 Harvard Law Review article.

A member of the media in a “mediacracy” or a “mediaocracy” is a “mediacrat.”

Wiktionary: mediacracyEtymology
media +‎ -cracy
Noun
mediacracy (countable and uncountable; plural mediacracies)
1. Rule by the media; a situation in which the media dominates or controls the populace.

Urban Dictionarymediacracy
government by the media; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the corporations and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents.
The mediacracy instructs me every day through the internet, radio and T.V. how to be the perfect American.
by Deborah Spicer Oct 30, 2006

(Oxford English Dictionary)
mediacracy, n.
Etymology: < media n.2 + -cracy comb. form. With the form mediaocracy compare -ocracy comb. form.
The (supposed) dominance of the mass media over society through its powerful influence upon government. Also, collectively: dominant or controlling figures in the mass media.
1975 K. P. Phillips Mediacracy ii. 24 If the Industrial Revolution created a new elite and launched a new, business domination of politics, the knowledge revolution raises the prospect of dominant media influence—of mediacracy instead of aristocracy or democracy.
1987 Washington Post 17 Dec. c10/5 Anderson calls this an age of individual political entrepreneurs, ‘a mediacracy’, in which the parties have become ‘disembodied, spectral in their influence, hollowed out rather than hallowed’.
1990 P. Taylor (title) See how they run: electing the President in an age of mediaocracy.

Google BooksForm und Erfahrung: ein Leben für ie. Demokratie
By Rudolf Wildenmann
Berlin: Duncker und Humblot
1976
Pg. 32:
This vast industrial complex frequently tends to establish what has been called “mediacracy”, i.e., the media often functions as a sort of secondary, and unrepresentative, government. This “government” lacks a legal basis other than freedom of speech.

Google BooksWords on Words:
A Dictionary for Writers and Others Who Care About Words
By John B. Bremner
New York, NY: Columbia University Press
1980
Pg. 116:
A newer coinage is mediacracy, invented in the mid-’70s to denote the power of the media, itself an ugly word, almost as ugly as mediacracy, which should die — the word, not the power of the press, essential to democracy, especially in the struggle against bureaucracy.

OCLC WorldCat recordSee how they run : electing the president in an age of mediaocracy
Author: Paul Taylor
Publisher: New York : Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1990.
Edition/Format: Book : English : 1st ed.

Right Side NewsRise of the Mediacracy
THURSDAY, 18 OCTOBER 2012 03:59 DANIEL GREENFIELD
A nation where governments are elected by the people is most vulnerable at the interface between the politicians and the people. The interface is where the people learn what the politicians stand for and where the politicians learn what the people want. The bigger a country gets, the harder it is to pick up on that consensus by stopping by a coffee shop or an auto repair store. That’s where the Medicracy steps in to control the consensus.

The media is no longer informative, it is conformative. It is not interested in broadcasting events unless it can also script them. It does not want to know what you think, it wants to tell you what to think. The consensus is the voice of the people and the Mediacrats are cutting its throat, dumping its body in a back alley and turning democracy into their own puppet show.